Lifestyle

Retail Workers Share the Dirtiest Dressing Room Blunders

19. Shoppers can turn into arsonists behind the changing room doors. It’s clear that behind closed doors, customers can commit some dirty acts–many that are usually… Trista - July 23, 2021

Going shopping is not always a walk in the park. Large crowds, long fitting room lines, and the often-futile attempt to find something that’s both cute AND fits well can lead to an exhausting day. But shoppers are the lucky ones. Retail workers have to deal with all sorts of mischief that far exceed the inconvenience of long lines. We’re going to look at the worst dressing room blunders they experience. Some will go beyond your most grotesque imagination from being naughty to nasty.

30. Shopping can bring out the trickster in people, and it’s usually not funny.

[deleted] had a close call to witnessing a dirty affair when she checked up on a patron who was taking an unusually long time in the dressing room. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as lucky as she thought as she encountered not one, but two, patrons: “It’s the standard affair; woman wants to try on some clothes, it’s crazy busy, the store is understaffed. I let her in and get called to some other part of the store, but I’m trying to keep an eye on the fitting rooms as I run around. Finally, I get a break and go back to the rooms; she’s still in there.

When the door opens, two people come out of the room. I start to stammer that they can’t both be in there. The second customer (a man) gives me a wink and says, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve already had kinky [s**] today.'” [deleted] must have been relieved since some fitting room encounters can be seriously freaky. Thankfully, this shopper was just tricking her… or was he? There’s no way she will ever really know. No trace of what might have happened was left in the room. The girl is lucky she didn’t see something she would never be able to unsee.

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29. Unfortunately, jokes are all too rare and the real “deed” too common.

When it comes to dressing rooms, customers seem to be pretty serious about kink, to the chagrin of all retail workers. It’s shocking to see what people try, and are able, to get away with. glitterhidesallsins shares her story and how she deals with these situations, though there seems to be no real, permanent solution: “I haven’t caught anyone in the act, but have found condoms on three occasions. When I see a guy sneak into a women’s fitting room, I find something else to do far away. I don’t get paid enough for coitus interruptus.”

lionliston’s own experiences coming across the remnants of the “deed” backs up glitterhidesallsins’s anecdote. It’s clear from their story that their retail job involved a roster of unpleasant situations, but this last one seems to have pushed them over the edge: “I worked at Aeropostale and aside from the two times customers [s*&%] in the fitting rooms and the four odd times customers [peed] in the fitting rooms, during our holiday season we found a used condom in one of our fitting rooms … Don’t miss working there at all.”

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28. Hearing the “deed” is also more common than anyone wants.

Dressing rooms are not soundproof–far from it. This is okay when shoppers stay innocent, but that’s not always the case. As aamendola3 describes, the latter situation is extremely disturbing and puts the retail worker in an uncomfortable position, to say the least: “When I worked at an H&M, I was working the fitting room when this couple tried to sneak by me to get into the fitting room together. Usually, this is just annoying and not a problem. These two, though, they started [doing it], they tried to keep quiet, but there are very distinct sounds when people [do it].

So I go over to the door and say. ‘Hey, only one person per fitting room, one of you has to get out.’ Then the guy replies, “hold on .. nnnggghhh. I’m almost done trying this on.” I then hear a whispered grunt, some rustling, and then they both walk out all sweaty and avoiding eye contact. I make sure they leave the store then go to see if they made a mess in the fitting room. I then immediately took my break, and someone else cleaned it up.”

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27. Repurposing clothes can cross a line, and this customer did just that.

Sometimes, the store associate is directly roped into the distressing situation, as [deleted] shares: “I work in a sketchy retail store, located in an even sketchier neighborhood. [One day], I’m working in the clothes department of my retail store. [This] lady has been patrolling the [aisles] for several hours. At the end of the fourth hour, she finally decides to do some shopping. Although I’m the only one in my department right now, and it’s a crazy busy day, this doesn’t stop her from requesting me to stand outside the [changing] room door while she tries on 25 outfits.

Somewhere in between my sneaking away to do other work and her complaining about the lack of deaf accessibility devices in the change room (she is not deaf), I return to find that she’s picked out another outfit. She holds out to be the skimpiest, frilliest, and sexiest lingerie set that we sell. I’m sure there have been more material in some of the loose threads I’ve pulled off my work shirt. At this point, I’m feeling a mixture of horror and laughter building up in me. ‘I, er, I don’t think that’s… technically considered… swimwear…’ She looks at me, annoyed. ‘Nonsense. I’ll just sew it!'”

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26. Utter destruction of changing rooms and merchandise shows complete disrespect.

A truly sad situation involves customers disrespecting retail workers for no apparent reason other than, perhaps, out of pure evil. retailtherapy6991 details one of these moments: “I had a woman one time who took the limit of five [items] in, and when she came out, she didn’t bring anything out with her, which at my higher-end store is kind of uncommon. People usually bring out their items and are really respectful (at times), and as she walked out, I wished her a good day. She just smirked at me, which made me even more suspicious. I walked to her fitting room, unlocked it, and I can’t even describe to you what she did.

She threw every article of clothing in [all places] imaginable. She threw two shirts over the bar that runs along the tops of the fitting room–which is pretty high, even I couldn’t grab them, so how she threw them up there with accuracy, I don’t even know. Also, she threw the pants and bra she tried on in opposite corners of the fitting room, and all the hangers were bent or broken. I guess I would have heard her if I had been near the fitting room when it happened, but I was helping another customer. What a [b*%&^] though. Who intentionally makes someone’s job harder?”

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25. Workers have to figure out how to handle customers who make false accusations.

This next story comes from a shopper who had a disturbing experience and describes the worker having to deal with the situation. The worker’s seemingly calm but assertive reaction illustrates the extent of unsettling experiences she must encounter on a routine basis. This makes sense for seasoned retail workers: when customers are accosted by other shoppers, whether verbally or physically, the associate working the fitting rooms is often the first line of defense.

As RoleModelFailure describes: “Little kid just [freaking] walked in (it was a store with the curtains and not the lockable doors) and as I [was] trying to shoo him away, his mom came yelling [and] accusing me of luring the kid into my stall. People then started to crowd around as I have my jeans half on and an undershirt and look at me like a pedophile. Luckily the person watching the dressing room saw this kid just walk away from his mom and start peeking in all the dressing rooms and happened upon mine. She started to scold the mother for leaving her young child alone in a big store like that.”

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24. Dressing rooms are used as bathrooms more often than you think.

When working in retail, it can start to seem like shoppers freely interchange dressing rooms for bathrooms. Whether they truly cannot find a nearby bathroom or are simply too lazy to do so, these shoppers perform far too many bathroom-related functions in changing rooms. This may come as a shock to those who don’t work in retail, but retail workers seem to take these events as a given — for better or for worse.

MantisTurdboggan shares their unpleasant experience: “Someone [peed] in a dressing room once. Also, on my first late-night shift, there was a lady who was obviously very drunk who decided to exit the dressing room wearing nothing but her bra and underpants. It didn’t help that she was overweight and [smelled] awful. She kept all the staff behind for 45 minutes following closing.” shaymi empathizes, stating, “I also found out that someone [peed] in the dressing rooms. At Kohl’s, it’s not uncommon for customers to leave huge piles of clothes in the dressing rooms. But this particular pile of clothes was used to soak up the…accident. Luckily, I [smelled] it before I touched it and was able to call the clean-up crew for help. We threw out all the clothes.”

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23. Fitting room bathroom antics can stem from irresponsible caretakers.

The thing is, the culprit who soils the fitting rooms doesn’t always deserve the blame: there are times when mentally unstable or elderly patrons, who are under the care of their caretaker, frequent a store. Of course, this is a perfectly fine way for these patrons to get exercise or spend the time outdoors; however, in these situations, it’s the caretaker’s responsibility to keep an eye on the patron and make sure they use the appropriate facilities for the appropriate task. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen and can lead to difficulties for the workers, as Anatidaephobia-y explains below:

“When I worked at a Macy’s in an upscale neighborhood, we had a phantom pooper in the Ralph Lauren changing rooms. Every other day, someone would walk in and find a steaming pile in the middle of the changing room floor. Many incidents later (and a lot of people requesting to change departments), they found out that a mentally unstable woman who came shopping with her caretaker every few days for exercise (outdoor mall) thought that it was a nice carpeted restroom. So glad I worked in the department across the store at that time.”

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22. Some caretakers don’t accompany their clients into the store at all.

Caretaker woes can afflict retail workers even outside the dressing room and lead to uneasiness within a store. Store associates have much to look after, from fitting room operations — which, as we’ve seen, can go terribly wrong — to reshelving and cash registers. When caretakers leave those under their care unattended at stores, they are disrespecting retail workers and creating potentially difficult situations for them and other shoppers. These circumstances are not the patron’s fault.

As infiniteloooop describes in his story: “Can’t blame the unstable lady, but I can be irritated at the caretaker for not noticing something like this. I don’t work at a store selling clothes, but at a bookstore. We get regulars who are mentally unstable frequently, and they usually walk around the store and find themselves in the music section listening to music for hours, dancing around. Nothing really crazy, but then they would walk around again and make some of the customers uneasy when they would repeat random things over and over. Found out that the ‘caretakers’ would dump them at our store unattended and come back hours later. I was furious.”

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21. Former employees sometimes cause messes out of spite.

Babe explains a time when a former, and apparently very spiteful, employee was caught in the dirty act: “At my local shopping center, I picked up a small job as a clerk in a music shop called “Sanity.” This is in Australia. Maybe a few of you have heard of it. Anyway, about once or twice a week, someone took a [s*&^] in the kids’ aisle of K-Mart, which we were next to. I checked each day on my break to see if it was [there]. Occasionally, they would smear it on the toys.

One day, when I was opening the shop at around 10 a.m, I walked into K-mart and saw the guy. He had on a black mask and was in a jacket and had already done the deed. He was in the process of smearing it on a toy Tickle Me, Elmo. I looked that [guy] dead in the eye–well, I thought I was anyway because he had a mask on . . . Eventually, a clerk at K-mart caught him and got the mall security on him. He was a 34-year-old [who] used to be a clerk [there] but got fired.”

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20. Changing rooms are not baby-changing stations.

The bathroom stories aren’t just reserved for adults who really need to go. Some parents seem to believe that changing rooms are actually changing stations, and they leave their babies’ messes right there on the floor for the workers to clean up. TaylorS1986’s disgust is clear in her story: “Somebody left a diaper full of slimy green baby [s*&^] on the floor of our thrift store’s dressing room. MY GOD, the smell! We Febreezed the [s*&^] out of the room (tiny, the size of a walk-in closet), and it still smelled faintly of baby [s*&^].”

Apparently, some parents are not even able to get their babies into the semi-private (though altogether inappropriate) setting of a room. When a young child needs to go, they need to go, as dats_how_i_rollei explains: “When I worked at an H&M, some lousy mother let her toddler crap quite the puddle of diarrhea in front of the till in the Kid’s Department. Without saying a single word, they just left. It must’ve looked like a Chinese subway train. Glad, I worked the Men’s Department.”

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19. Shoppers can turn into arsonists behind the changing room doors.

It’s clear that behind closed doors, customers can commit some dirty acts–many that are usually reserved for the bedroom or the bathroom. But sometimes, they commit more serious crimes, like arson. The laws around customers’ activities in fitting rooms aren’t perfectly clear from retail workers’ anecdotes; sometimes, workers call for security, while other times, they let the customers go, even for the same activities. Consequences likely depend on how generous a particular manager feels on a given day (or maybe more likely how many mishaps they’ve already had to deal with that day). But arson seems like a clear, punishable offense.

Hey_Nurse shares a story of just such an event: “We had some teenagers burn some bras in the fitting rooms once. Not really sure of their motivation. But it was good fire drill practice for all the new Christmas recruits! And with a real fire! How special! I hate retail.” It’s unclear how these teenagers managed to pull off this bra-burning. Was it premeditated, and they took the lighter in with them, or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision? Whatever the case, the fact that this incident led to an evacuation likely did not fare well with the store’s security.

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18. Teenagers wreak havoc even in the fitting room.

Many of us are familiar with the infuriating nature of teenagers, but Iggypop19’s story takes the cake: “[Teenage girls] used to come into one store where I worked, right at 10 [minutes] to closing, and walk around with heaps of clothes on each arm with no intention of [them]. A thing it was just a clothes-trying-on-for-fun game. Then try to leave the heap in the fitting room floor with hangers everywhere to go get more. One night it was officially closing, and once the lights dimmed down and the store was closed at 9:30, we could deny people trying to go into the fitting rooms. And it was amazing. A group of girls tried to come in at 9:33 [and I said], ‘Oh no, sorry girl. It’s closed.’

‘Like seriously. You can’t let us in to try this on!? (snarky teen tone).’ ‘No, sorry (but not really), we closed at 9:30, so the fitting room is closed. But if you want to put it on hold and come back tomorrow, you can try it on and buy it tomorrow when we reopen.’ ‘This is bull [s*&^]!’ They stomp off, all complaining.”

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17. Audacious customers don’t seem to understand boundaries…

Dressing room blunders don’t even stop at higher-end stores, as Sneffrasmone illustrates: “I used to work at an upper-middle-class floral themed shop in London, selling mostly homewares, handbags, clothes and fabrics. One day I had a middle-aged American woman and her early-twenties daughter come in and go to the clothing area of the shop. Firstly, the mother asked me to find out what size underwear her daughter wore while she tried on a dress, and nothing I asked (What size do you usually wear? What size are you wearing now? What skirt size are you?) yielded any response other than “I don’t know,” which was pretty helpful.

The mother then comes out of the changing room and asks the same question about herself, and I guess a size for her, and show her these lace bags of two pairs of knickers we sell. Before I can say anything, she grabs the bag, takes a pair out, and tries them on in front of me over her black lace thong that was in full view. She asks my opinion of what they look like on her, and I give her my honest opinion (“I don’t really know, madam. It’s up to you.”). I’m uncomfortable with this, but whatever, she’s got underwear on underneath.

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16. …and some people don’t know when to stop pushing the boundaries.

Sneffrasmone continues with her story, showing how clearly the customer did not understand the boundaries of being in a public place: “She decides a size smaller would be better, so takes this current pair off, takes a size S bag of panties, and says. ‘Just to let you know, I’m gonna be leaving with these on, okay sweetie,’ and again, in front of the rest of the shop and me, yanks her dress back up, takes off her thong, and puts on these unpaid for knickers whilst I’m standing there holding the still-warm knickers she took off moments ago. Looking me dead in the eye and putting her old underwear in her handbag, she goes, ‘Oh honey, it feels so good to have underwear this soft that’s not getting all up in my [butt].’

I know it’s not as horrific as some of the others here, but honestly, it was surreal watching this as if it was normal when our usual shoppers are the type of people who can drop £300 on crockery without thinking twice and treat you like a mule.” Unlike the other shoppers at this store, this woman did not even pay for her item, instead of relying on the shock factor of her actions to get her through.

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15. Handstanding is the new dancing like nobody’s watching.

tako9, a movie theater worker, commiserates with retail workers with his encounter with a patron’s bizarre behavior. This didn’t happen in a dressing room but, as we’ve seen, was in a pretty similar location, the bathroom: “Not a fitting room so much but in a theater bathroom. We had a bathroom located on a mezzanine level that not many people used. I went to clean it one day, and when I went in, I saw a pair of hands on the ground in the handicapped stall. The person was doing handstand push-ups in the bathroom.

When he realized that I was there, he opened the stall door and gave me one of the most embarrassing looks I’ve seen in my life. I leave the bathroom so that he can finish whatever the [frick] he was doing and sweep around the floor a bit. I went back in after a couple of minutes, and this time, he’s drinking water from the sink like a dog. Again, he notices me and then gives me one of the most embarrassing looks I’ve ever seen in my life.”

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14. Always wash the clothes you purchase, or something might smell amiss.

It may not seem like common sense to wash newly-purchased clothing, but retail workers swear by doing so; they’ve witnessed firsthand the lack of hygiene that comes into contact with clothing that shoppers try on in the fitting rooms. Oneplytoiletpaper describes their experience: “Thankfully, I haven’t found anything dodgy in my change rooms so far, but on some days it smells so strongly of B.O. that I feel like puking, and I swear it should be some kind of health hazard to just stand there and inhale those kinds of smells. People, always wash your ‘new’ clothes before you wear them unless you get it straight off the staff when they’re unpacking.”

Dats_how_i_rollei something similar, and it still scares him to this day: “My worst fitting room experience was the Bra From Hell. Imagine a young, rather portly Russian female with about F cups. Now imagine her probably avoiding soap since the fall of the Iron Curtain. I don’t know what this bra smelled like…sweat, [a*^], mold….anything and everything… So, I ended up just brushing it off my table, leaving it for the female coworkers. I never had a similar experience with male customers.”

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13. Shoppers think dressing rooms can be used for disposing of feminine products.

As shocking and unbelievable as it may seem, retail workers complain that coming across used feminine products left within changing rooms is a common pain point. It’s hard to comprehend why anyone would leave such nausea-inducing items in a public area, but it seems that some shoppers rudely believe that workers should take care of all of their messes. [deleted] expresses frustration at just how many times they’ve had this experience: “Every once in a while, you will hear a crunching sound. That sound is a woman opening a tampon wrapper. The amount of times I have seen bloody tampons in dressing room corners is unbelievable!”

Hawkbass1 comments on what we’re all wondering: what causes a person to use a fitting room as a disposal for something that clearly doesn’t belong there? Hawkbass1 shares: “I worked as a manager at a Gap Outlet. We have benches in our fitting rooms, and I went in to clean out the large room. Underneath the bench was a used tampon with blood all over the floor. I’m not sure what drives a person to do that when there’s a bathroom right across from our store.”

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12. People go shopping in health and, regrettably, in sickness.

After all the stories of bodily function disasters happening at retail stores, it’s not surprising to find out that there’s plenty of things coming out the other end as well. It’s a little more difficult to blame the customer for getting sick in a store, but the situation is still very gross for retail workers. It also leads to a headache-inducing chain of cleaning events.

Rockdio tells how this happens in a retail setting: “Later that month, we had a family come into our store. The son didn’t look all that well, very pale, eyes kind of glazed over. Within ten minutes of them coming into the store, the poor kid throws up onto a stack of PS2s in their ‘used’ boxes. [The] family left in a big hurry, apologizing on the way out. It cleared out the store pretty [quickly], but we had to clean up the mess. (I replaced all of those boxes and threw out the ones that had ‘biological hazard’ on them. My hands smelled like a mixture of chlorine, disinfectant, and floor cleaners the rest of the day.”

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11. Adults don’t always follow social protocol in the juniors’ section.

Even innocent shoppers can cause embarrassing mishaps, although, in kmentropy’s case, she was more disturbed than the customer herself: “I worked at Charlotte Russe for almost five years. It’s a juniors’ and essentially young women’s inexpensive clothing store. This doesn’t stop the older crowd from coming through, which generally isn’t a big deal. But there are times [when it is]. I was working the fitting room, flitting around because it was relatively slow, and putting back clothes as I let people in. A woman called me over through the door to make sure I was there because she wanted advice on a top.

When I answered, she came out of her room and stood, hands-on-hips, to show me the top. She asked me how she looked. As I turned around, it took all of my self-control not to react. The woman was wearing one of the sheer, hippie-style tops that require a bandeau or camisole underneath. She had on no bra, and she was about 45 years old . . . I had a FULL view of [her upper body]. I quickly told her that the top required a layering piece and tried to nonchalantly usher her back into the stall.

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10. Flashers will lurk wherever they can, including dressing rooms.

In some situations, customers flash retail workers for much more sinister reasons than the oblivious woman at Charlotte Russe. These flashers go into the changing rooms with the sole purpose of showing others their birthday suit. Sheeps92 describes a moment when the flasher knew exactly what he was doing: “I used to work in a very small fancy dress shop. The fitting rooms were out the back near the staff desk, so we could pretty much see a lot of what was going on in the fitting rooms if they didn’t close the curtains.

Most people did, but we once had a guy come in [and] try on all the ‘kinky’ outfits. He left the curtain half-open, so when we walked out the back to check on him, we saw the whole package. He just stood there, half in our Johnny Rotten costume, [thing] hanging out. Then he knew we saw him and carried on changing. He left soon after, without taking any costumes. Ew.”

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9. Being comfortable in one’s own skin can come at a cost…

Ladyofgreentea tells a story about uncomfortable encounters with a very comfortable person: “A few years ago, I was that girl that gave you the colorful tag when you went into the fitting rooms. I also became a champion at hanging and folding clothes at super speed. That day, I remember, was really busy. We must have been having a special in underwear or something. I’m literally up to my eyebrows in unhung clothes that people dump on me on the way out. I call the front desk. I am out of hangers. We need more hangers. You can’t hang clothes without hangers. My super supervisor says, “Sure, I’ll send someone over.”

An old lady walks in. She has about 20 too many items. I tell her she’s only allowed five. She can swap them over later. “Okay,” she says and picks a select few. After about a quarter of an hour, my supervisor sends across the new kid (he looks just under 15) with a trolley full of hangers. I see him making his way towards me down the aisle. In that exact same second, the old woman walks out. Naked. It’s a direct visual of a certain scene from There’s Something About Mary.

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8. …to bystanders that is.

ladyofgreentea continues with her story: “I want to get the other clothes,” [the old lady] says. My mind snaps out of its stupor as I stare at this woman in front of me, then at the kid pushing the trolley of hangers towards me, without a care in the world. I start making ridiculous hand movements to try to send the kid away. Too late. “ladyofgreentea, I’ve bought you your hang-AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” I’ve managed to blind the poor boy forever. The look in his eyes. Haunted.

Unfortunately, he averted his gaze from her as quickly as possible, looked me in the eye, and screamed, eyes full of terror in my face. I dashed around the counter and covered her up with one of the random shirts off the table. I tried to usher her back in the stall, whispering, “Excuse me, ma’am, you cannot walk out of the stall without your clothes on. This is a unisex fitting room,” and she was completely nonplussed and claimed that the poor kid was ‘over-reacting.'”

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7. A pattern emerges among elderly ladies and their comfort with streaking.

Many people can attest that elderly people are more comfortable in their own skin compared to the rest of us; after all, they have had years of learning not to care what others think. They walk about in locker rooms adorning their birthday suits without a worry, and in general, seem at peace with the wrinkles they’ve accumulated over a lifetime of gaining wisdom. However, one place you might not expect to see a buck-naked elderly person is in the middle of a retail store–not even in the vicinity of the fitting room, mind you, but out walking in the wild of the aisles.

Awwkitties tells of what can happen: “Went into a Chico’s once and being a small store, they only had two freestanding dressing stalls. Two nasty old ladies pulled back the curtains and walked out naked, looking for more clothes. This wasn’t encompassed within an actual dressing room. They just walked out into the store, in full view of the mall, naked. The moral of the story is, just because you don’t care if you are seen does not mean anyone else is fine seeing your knee-length boobs swinging about.”

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6. Shoppers’ inappropriate comments can be crueler than expected.

Pregnancy can present challenges for many women who choose to continue working during their term. Their willingness to keep working is commendable and shows just how far women have come in the workplace, shattering others’ expectations of women’s capabilities. But still, when a pregnant woman is likely experiencing fatigue and other symptoms while working, the last thing she wants is a customer approaching and laughing at her.

To aquasleo’s dismay, she went through that experience: “When I was pregnant, I worked for a little while at a [Halloween] store. I was tending the fitting room one day, and this woman walked up to me and began laughing hysterically. She asked, ‘Oh my God, [what] is that? That’s so funny!’ Me: ‘Excuse me?’ Her: ‘The belly! That’s hilarious! Where did you get that?’ I was temporarily stunned as I searched my brain frantically for a P.C. way to explain to her where I had gotten the belly. After about 30 seconds of me staring at her blankly, her smile melted into absolute horror as she realized her mistake. Her: ‘Oh god. You’re really pregnant, aren’t you?’ Me: ‘Yes, ma’am.’ I’ve never seen someone exit a store that quickly.”

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5. Customers berate employees for mistakes they make themselves.

Customers can be outright mean, as Txiemann illustrates in his story: “While working . . . at a clothing store, one of the other employees accidentally opened the fitting room door on an older woman. He was in his early 20s and into the metal scene (long black hair, gauges, etc). She flipped her [s*&^] and asked to see the manager. I was the [moderator] and had to listen to this woman berate my coworker and say the worst things about him . . . as I explained that we were incredibly swamped and that she should have had the door locked if she was changing (as was written on the inside of each fitting room door).

She [stormed] out only to return a few minutes later with four additional Karens . . . [None of them] believed I was the manager as I was also in my early 20s. They refused to leave until they spoke to whoever was in charge. I ended up giving them the corporate number and told my friend to act like he was fired and pretend to call his mom crying outside the store to see what they would do. The entire flock of Karens walked by without a care in the world.”

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4. Some shoppers ask for too intimate of help…

[deleted] describes a time when they were roped into helping a customer, even though her husband was just nearby: “I work at a clothing store where I come into contact with many customers whose actions I find to be inappropriate. During my first few months of working there, I was stationed in the fitting room, the usual spot they had me working. I had a customer wave me over who was standing in one of the doors of a dressing room. She looked like a lady in her mid-thirties who seemed to be shopping with her significant other.

She asked me if the yellow shirt she was wearing looked okay on her, and then she walked to the fitting room and stood in front of the mirror so she could get another look at herself in it. I said I liked it, and then she had me come into the fitting room (with the door still open) and held up to me the same shirt but in black, and said it’s the same size, but it fit differently, which I thought was odd.

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3. …that can backfire on the employee.

[deleted] continues on to the more horrifying portion of the story: “She must have thought that I didn’t believe her because she then walked around me to shut the fitting room door (we were then in this tiny room alone together), and she started putting this black shirt on to prove to me that it looked different. Now, I did not know this lady, yet I still got to see a glimpse of her nipples, and it was the most awkward experience of my life. All I could think of [was] why didn’t she invite her S.O. in there with her, instead of me?

When she finally put her shirt on, I told her it did look different and that she should get the yellow shirt instead. I booked it out of there, hoping no one would see me coming out of the closed fitting room with a customer. This lady did not see anything wrong with what had happened, but I was so embarrassed and confused [about] how I let myself get into the situation. It made me pretty [wary] when other customers would ask me for help in the fitting room in the future.”

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2. Fitting room signs may need to be neon and flashing to prevent inappropriate nakedness.

geoliciouswerdsmith shares a story from his wife that highlights the apathetic attitude that retail workers can develop after seeing too many disturbing things: “I remember an incident a few years ago [that] my wife told me about. [My wife] needed a pair of jeans and went into a discount clothing store that was fairly new to the shopping center to check what they had before heading over to a more expensive store.

She [was] making her way down the main aisle and [started] seeing women just trying on clothes right where they were–trying on shirts, trying on pants, just standing there in their bras and underwear. She looked around and saw a sign [that said] “Fitting Room” and out of curiosity walked over to see hardly anybody there. WTF!! These women were so lazy and had zero shame. I asked her what the employees were doing, and she said they all looked just mentally checked out. That store was open only 2-3 months at the time. Years later, it is still there. She hasn’t been back. Who does this??”

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1. Shoppers treat retail workers like servants.

beeeezintrap explains, “Just a regular day at work, working the fitting room. This customer comes in, and, long story short, he comes out with the clothes and no hangers (not a big deal), so I asked him if the hangers were in the room so I [could] grab them. He goes, ‘Yeah, and all the other clothes I didn’t want.’ So I say, ‘Okay, have a nice day.’ I turn around into the room and see hangers everywhere and clothes on the floor. But wait, there’s more… HIS DIRTY [A*%] SOCKS.

So I turn around, and the customer is walking away, and I say ‘Sir, you left your socks in the room.’. . . He goes, “Yeah, I don’t want them anymore; you can throw them out.” At this point, I’m in shock. And I say, ‘Um sir…” and he goes, ‘Yeah, go pick ’em up.’ Thank God my manager was there ’cause I was gonna lose [it]… My point is, RETAIL WORKERS ARE HUMANS. Not your maid, your mom, your punching bag. Just because we are required to be nice to customers does not mean we are a doormat for you to [s*&^] on.”

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